Category: China Life

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Day 17 – First tutoring session

Today I had my first one-on-one session with my Mandarin tutor. While it was a good session, I do have to say having to go through most of the initial sounds and final sounds (the base “sounds” that make up syllables and thus words) was pretty tough. One of the apps I have on my phone, Hello Chinese, does have all these available to listen to so I can replay the sounds and try to mimic them. Ugggh. It feels like I’m back in elementary school and going to speech class!

Tonight I think I’m headed back to Ligondi Road for dinner and a pint — ok litre — of beer. It’ll be interesting to see how that area is on the weekend. Instead of taking a taxi there, I’m going to attempt jumping on the #146 bus which should have a stop about 20 mins walking from where I’m staying and will save cash for the taxi ride home instead!

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Day 16 – Water Alley / Ligongdi Road neighborhood

Last night I was asked by one of my future coworkers to join her for dinner and then a poker match in a part of Suzhou that is new to me: Water Alley Neighborhood, also known as Ligongdi Road.

This part of Suzhou is very expat friendly with lots of international style restaurants and pubs and tons of English spoken. The place where we played poker, Ollie’s, is a restaurant/bar that sometimes has live music, a pool table, a few different beers on tap that come in the customary 1L glass, and a semi-private area in the back for the poker league. I did not sample the food at Ollies — maybe next time — but I did have a litre of beer. 

While I didn’t do too much exploring of the various restaurants and bars in this area, Google Maps seems to detail them pretty well as you can see in the picture below.

Water Alley - Ligongdi Road

But where is this neighborhood in relation to everything else? Yeah, I heard you ask that question. Ligongdi Rd is on the southwestern corner of Jinji Lake (金鸡湖), seemingly in the middle of everything yet not really that easy to get to via public transit. A 30 minute cab ride from this neighborhood to where I’m staying in Moon Bay was 30 yuan (元), or less than $5 USD. (Considering the bus would cost only 2元, it’s could be pretty expensive if you’re on a budget … )  Anyway, I decided a visual representation of the various expat friendly neighborhoods or areas is needed:

SIP Map Annotated

Currently I’m living in Moon Bay, which is a short 20 minute walk to work. There’s a few things in this area for those who only speak English, but not much: Coconut Bar (expat type restaurant and bar, a bit on the pricey side), Papa John’s Pizza, Four Points Sheraton Hotel, three different Starbucks, and a Subway restaurant. Do not expect to do much shopping in this area nor expect the Chinese restaurants to have picture menus. On a post another day, I’ll detail the neighborhood a bit more, same with Times Square.

How did poker night turn out? It was my first time playing in a real game in 3 or 4 years, so I was happy that I was not the first one “out” for the night. I ended in the lower third, but that’s ok as it was fun and was good to meet some new people! It would’ve been nice, though, if my best hand of the night didn’t wasn’t a suited King-10. (No pairs! No Aces! No suited connectors. Ugggh. Maybe next time…)

Suzhou Poker Club Chips

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Day 15 – Design and branding

Yesterday as I was doing some grocery shopping I stumbled upon something rather interesting. In one of the aisles in the little grocery store were bottles of BBQ sauce. It didn’t matter what the brand was, but through the dark color of the viscous liquid inside and the shape of the bottle, I knew exactly what was being sold even if I could not read the label.

As I meandered through the rest of the store I noticed a few more items that were in familiar shaped containers with labels I could not read nor understand yet knew exactly what I was looking at: Toothpaste, jars of spaghetti sauce, and even laundry detergent.

While I’m in a very foreign place for an American, it’s good to know some desired items can be found and purchased without knowing how to read. It kind of makes me wonder if this type of container design and, to an extent branding, was done on purpose or if certain industries just followed suit with similar containers based on the first one that hit the market.

In the end my shopping trip was a success as I bought some fruits to have in my apartment, I found sponges to clean my dishes, was able to bring home a container of laundry detergent, and even treated myself to a bottle of wine.  Yes, even wine bottles are mostly ubiquitous in shape and labeling no matter where you are in the world!

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Day 14 – Two weeks here and I’m still alive!

Two weeks ago today, right around the time this blog post goes live, marks my entry into China as an immigrant of sorts! While at some point in the distant future I will likely move back to the USA, I currently have no plans to do so.

To celebrate two weeks of still breathing — arguably somewhat not-so-clean air — I’m compiling a list of things that were encountered and not expected. Hope you enjoy!

  • Western-style places charge a lot more! From Starbucks (星巴苦咖啡) to that expats bar & restaurant around the corner from where I’m staying, there’s definitely a 25-40% surcharge on what things really should cost.

  • The air quality in summer is decent. At least here in Suzhou (苏州市) there haven’t been any days where the air quality kept me inside; the rain and humidity has done that a heck of a lot more!

  • Waterproof boots are a must. I’d look pretty silly wearing waterproof boots and shorts as the temperature is high (typically 28C/86F), but my feet would feel much more comfortable. Too bad those boots are packed with my goods on the slow boat across the Pacific ocean.

  • It’s seriously safe here to walk around. Not once have I felt personally threatened or seen any confrontations of any kind. Well, almost …

  • When crossing the street remember the smaller, less massive objects should yield to the more massive ones. Unlike in the United States, pedestrians will get mowed over in a crosswalk even when the sign says to walk by a car that should stop at a red light. It just doesn’t work that way. Peds seems to be the lowest priority on the streets, then bicycles, then e-bill, then cars, and then it’s a toss-up between trucks and busses. Always double-check before crossing a street!

  • You don’t need to speak Mandarin to get by, but it does help! Today, for example, I took the bus up to Times Square to do some grocery shopping. I visited three stores and not once did I even try speaking Mandarin. The one time I needed to communicate, pointing and using hand motions worked fantastic. While this won’t work for the long run, it did make for a decent haul of fruits, veg, cleaning supplies (laundry!), and even a bottle of wine.

  • Restaurants with picture menus will also help. Check out Harmony City Mall in Times Square for some of these.

  • The bus in Suzhou is really, really cheap and efficient. For 2元 you can hop on an air conditioned bus and go pretty much anywhere. The 5 or so miles to get from my hotel to Times Square takes only 40 minutes (17 of that is walking to the bus stop). Considering the subway takes 1hr 10mins and costs 6元 for the same distance and requires at least one transfer … the bus is great! And the #156 runs every 10 mins up and down Xinghu Street, the main north-south road in my part of SIP (Suzhou Industrial Park).

  • Napkins are … different. More than half the time at restaurants, instead of a proper paper napkin, small packages of facial tissues are passed around. I find these terribly inefficient at cleaning one’s hands or face during and after a meal. Guess it’s just something else to get used to!

  • Carry cash, including the coins, but be prepared for shrapnel. Depending on where you go, credit cards might not be accepted, so bring cash with you or look for an ATM. (Don’t worry, most ATMs have a button to press for English…) Also depending on the place, they may or may not be able to break that 100元 bill you’re attempting to pay with. If that’s the case, grab another item or two or hope that you have smaller bills! When you collect your change, you’ll get lots of 1元 coins which can be used on the bus and subway. You may also get smaller coins (1 or 5) which I find are useless; they’re just adding weight to my coin pouch!

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Day 13 – Lingering Garden and Shantang Street

The rain held off for most of today, but gosh was it humid! I spent about an hour on the treadmill this morning and my shirt weighed three times as much by the time I was done. Eeek!  After a morning of studying Mandarin, SharePoint, and catching up on the latest episode of Rachel Maddow, I spent a good chunk of the afternoon exploring two sections of old town Suzhou: The Lingering Garden (留园) and Shantang Street (山塘街).

The Lingering Garden is one old gardens that help give Suzhou its mystique as a beautiful city. In fact, this garden dates back to 1593 when China was ruled by the Ming dynasty. It is known for its collection of bonsai trees (about 200 of them) and interestingly shaped rocks. In fact, in the bonsai section of the garden, there was this rock collection that reminded me of a combination of a dog and an Egyptian Sphinx!

Lingering Garden Sphinx-16

While the Wikipedia article on Shantang Street is rather … skinny … I’m pleased to report there’s a lot more going on in this area than that article would lead onto, provided I was on the right street! (Directions in China are still confusing to me…) As I walked north along Guangji Road (广济路), from the Lingering Garden, I crossed a stone bridge that went over a canal (pictured below) and on the other side of the bridge was a narrow street (maybe 4-5 meters wide). To the west, the street had a number of shops selling anything from prepared and fresh food, fruits & veg, baked goods, and textile good. To the east, the street was a bit more upscale and housed a number of other shops including a number of jewelery and art shops.

 

Canal near Shantang Street (left) and looking down Shantang Street (right).

If tomorrow remains mostly dry, another garden and perhaps a trip to an expat bookshop, library, bar, restaurant and events space all rolled into one might be had!

Today’s word of the day is 花园 (Huāyuán), meaning garden.

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Day 12 – Rain, rain go away!

It looks like this week will be a wet one. The forecast for Suzhou is for rain every day, and it looks to be getting heavier as the week progresses, which will either put a damper on plans to explore more of the city, or I’ll just have to suck it up and get wet. Decisions, decisions!

Today was one of those wet days and I decided to spend it mostly indoors. Studying Mandarin, studying for work, a good workout, and a bit of TV helped pass the time.

Kind of a blue Monday I suppose, but those are OK every now and then! Here’s hoping the weather holds for a day or two this week as I want to go and check out a couple of the gardens in the old part of town.

Today’s word of the day is 雨 (Yǔ), meaning rain.

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Day 11 – The busses along Xinghu Jie

This weekend the weather was lovely and it allowed for some exploring of the city, specifically the Times Square area. This is a really nice, upscale neighborhood with tons of shops, restaurants and apartment buildings. The Suzhou subway (Line 1) has a stop in the area, which makes it convenient and easy to get to, except from where I am staying in Suzhou. There is no North/South subway line on the east side of Jinji and Dushu lakes, so in order to take the subway from Moon Bay where I’m currently staying to Times Square, I need to hop on Line 2 and transfer to Line 1 … all of which takes about 80 minutes. Oy!

A faster alternative is to hop on the 156 or 176 busses that go up and down Xinhu Jie (Star Lake Street) and run every 10-15 minutes. For all of 2元 (or about $0.30 USD) you can travel the 4-5 miles from Moon Bay up to Times Square. Yeah, a little walking is involved, but nothing too bad. Just be sure to have exact change as the bus drivers don’t make change and you don’t want to over pay!

I’m glad I explored Times Square a bit more as I found a number of good restaurants to sample in the Harmony City shopping mall. That place is huge! It even has a rooftop park as you can see below.

IMG_20170617_172614-EFFECTS

I’m not sure if this is the right translation, but today’s word of the day is 总线 (Zǒngxiàn), meaning bus.

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Day 10 – Recapping the team offsite to Hangzhou

Even though my first day has yet to happen, my team at work allowed me to join them on an offsite event at a nearby city called Hangzhou (杭州). The city of Hangzhou is known as one of the two most beautiful cities in China, with Suzhou being the other one! The city hosted the G-20 Summit in 2016 and is also the home to e-commerce giant Alibaba.

The goal of the offsite was to allow the team to get to know one another better through a series of games, events, and elaborate meals. Most of the “getting to know you better” time was spent over these meals, so that’s what I took pictures of! OMG was there such delicious food. You can see a lot of the pictures in my Suzhou album on Google Photos. Each meal featured various vegetable, meat, fowl, fish, and crustaceans including items like bullfrog in spicy chili oil, smoked duck tongue, various soups, jellyfish, squash, pumpkin, pork belly “sandwiches”, and this fish that’s seen better days.

The fish has seen better days

Hangzhou has a really nice park & lake area called Westlake. After dinner on Thursday, a number of us from the team went to Westlake to go walk around and have a good time. Westlake was billed as a beautiful area with lots of little shops and a great walking trail; it did not disappoint! The pictures I took at night did not come out all that great as the camera I’m using (an older point-and-shoot Nikon Coolpix) does not have the best settings for nighttime photography nor did I have a tripod with me. Most of the shots came out terrible, sans a few like the one below. (Others are posted in the aforementioned Google Photos album.)

SOX Offsite Hangzhou-6

The Hangzhou event was a big success as many team members got to know one another better, learned how to work together as a team on non-work related tasks, and we got to explore a place not everyone previously visited. With some now friendly faces known at work apart from my immediate team, I’m quite looking forward to my first official day of work in a few weeks.

No new word of the day today, but look for that list to start up again tomorrow!

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Day 6 – Technology + Golden State Warriors = Awesomesauce!

Another rainy morning which didn’t yield until late afternoon which, once again, hampered plans to explore more of Suzhou. So what’s a guy supposed to do? Figure out how to stream the Golden State Warriors game, of course!

First up, I needed to subscribe to a new VPN as the one I was previously using (TunnelBear) was just not reliable enough here in China, nor would it allow me to stream Netflix on my laptop — I could on my cell phone, sometimes — and I could not get it to work on my five year old iPad. After a bit of research I settled on trying ExpressVPN and, let me tell you, that was a great choice! Not only can I now stream Netflix on my laptop, it works on my iPad *and* you can choose from multiple servers within the United States — meaning you can set your location where you’re supposedly physically located(“spoof”); more on that later as to why you’d want to do that.

Shameless plug: If you’re looking for a VPN solution, use this link to sign up for ExpressVPN so this shameless blogged can get some bones thrown his way! And if you’re trying to understand why you might want to use a VPN when living in a non-censored country, watch this 90 second video.

Before leaving San Francisco, I knew there were a few options for streaming TV over the internet. The obvious provider is Hulu, but for some reason I just don’t like Hulu. There’s no rhyme or reason to that choice, it’s just me being me. SlingTV is the new kid on the block so I figured I’d give them a try. After connecting to my ExpressVPN account, I went through the sign-up process for SlingTV. Well, I *almost* went through the process. Step 3 (of 3) asked for a credit card number to finalize the setup. No problem! I entered my card number and it was rejected. What??? Ok, so let me try that again. Same result.  And a third time with a different card produced the same result. Not sure what the issue was, but right then and there SlingTV lost my business. Time for Plan B, and I don’t mean RU-486.

Since I wanted to stream ESPN for the Warriors game, I had to find a provider that has that channel and preferably one that has ESPN2, ESPNU, and ESPN3 as well so I can watch college football this fall. It didn’t take too long to figure out that YouTube TV has those channels plus MSNBC (Hello, Rachel Maddow!). To make things even better, YouTube TV throws in a free DVR type service (SlingTV charges extra for that) *and* they accepted my credit card. Things were up and running with only a few minutes of the game being missed.

Now why was it a good thing that ExpressVPN allows you to choose certain locations in the USA to spoof your physical location? Well, as it turns out, with YouTube TV you can watch “local” channels — ABC, CBS, NBC — provided you’re “physically” in that market. With ExpressVPN I can set my location to LA, SF, Seattle, NYC …  meaning there’s a good chance I can watch some SF Giants games or Seattle Sounders matches if they’re on one of those channels! Yee haw! SPORTS!

It should be no surprise that today’s word of the day is 技术 (Jìshù), meaning technology.

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Day 5 – The medical exam

It rained again this morning which, in itself wasn’t the issue, but the rain caused many people to take taxis (出租车) to work and made it nearly impossible to hail one to take me 27km clear across Suzhou to get to the medical facility in time for my 9am appointment. You see, even though my physician in the US gave me a physical (which needed to include a chest x-ray and an EKG readout), China requires one done in country in order to obtain a work/residency permit. So yeah. Anyway. The taxi arrived at 8:50am, then got stuck in traffic, then dropped me off at the wrong location (about half a mile away) … The one good thing in all this is that there was no actual appointment that was missed; the facility seems to be a “drop in” type location.

The medical exam itself was quite interesting. My contact who’s helping direct what needs to be done for obtaining the work/residency permit did not mention I would have to bring 386rmb (~ $57) in cash with me, so … after registration and a visit with the cashier (payments up front, not after), the cashier kindly directed me to where the closest ATM was — a ten minute walk down the street! Now, walking 10 minutes is nothing for me, but where this medical facility was located made the walk quite interesting as it’s in a factory/industrial part of town. Also, the closest ATM was NOT on the same street. Thankfully Google Maps (hello downloaded offline areas!)  was able to point me in the right direction.

With cash in hand, I walked back into the medical facility, paid for my exam, and proceeded up to the second floor to begin the process. There were different rooms that you had to enter and each room had a specialist that was going to poke and prod you in a different manner. Height/Weight/BMI and blood pressure in one room, blood sample & urine analysis in the next, stomach ultrasound in the third, eye exam and EKG in the fourth, and then chest x-ray in the fifth — which happened to be back on the first floor.

The eye exam was rather interesting as unlike in the USA where you read a line of letters back to the medical professional administering the exam, in China you specify which way the character 山 is facing. They also test your color blindness, which apparently they weren’t as thorough in that category because I know that’s one exam that I will fail.

Once all the exams were finished it was time to tender my document showing stamps from each of the rooms. I thought it was time to head home, but no … I needed to get a copy of my passport to turn into the facility and get my photo taken to attach to my medical exam. No idea why that photo was required as they scanned my passport and used that photo to add to the printed document that I carried around to the various rooms.

At this point in the day I was getting hangry as I hadn’t eaten since the night before — fasting was required for the exams — and quite thirsty as I violated one of my rules for living in China: I didn’t have a bottle of water with me and man was I thirsty! Fortunately I was able to hail a cab with no trouble and made my way back to the apartment. Thursday there’ll be similar fun as I need to return to the medical facility to pick up my “certificate”, whatever that means. (Why can’t they just fax it to the hotel? Oh yeah, original copies of things are big here.)

Today’s word of the day: 出租车 (chūzū chē), meaning taxi.